It wasn’t quite a retrial, but the legal eagles who participated in two of the most high-profile insider trading trials in history participated in a reunion of sorts at Columbia Law School Friday.

The lawyers who faced off in the trials of Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam last year and former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta earlier this year still agree on very little. And U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over Gupta’s trial, is still very, very funny.

Bloomberg News

Rajat Gupta, left, and his lawyer Gary Naftalis

In one panel discussion, John Dowd, the lead defense attorney for Rajaratnam, Jonathan Streeter, the lead prosecutor, and Judge Richard Holwell recounted the six-week long trial of the one-time hedge fund titan.

Dowd told the audience of Columbia Law School students and lawyers that insider trading laws are “amorphous and slippery,” and said he thought the publicity of the case hurt his client. . . . . Read More »

Goldman Sachs employees shouldn’t worry if they didn’t see Lloyd Blankfein hanging around the office water cooler this week. He was just up the road in the federal courthouse.

The Goldman chief executive spent hours testifying Monday, Thursday and Friday in the insider trading trial of former Goldman director Rajat Gupta. Despite the lengthy nature of his testimony – he was a government witness – Blankfein may have only played a bit part in the case against Mr. Gupta.

Blankfein’s presence, though, had an unintended side-effect: He injected moments of levity in a trial that critics, and even presiding U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, have sometimes called dull.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Blankfein freely riffed with Judge Rakoff and defense attorney Gary Naftalis, who both enjoy seizing opportunities to joke around during otherwise dry testimony.

At one point Friday, Gupta’s defense team projected. . . . . Read More »

As the government prepared to rest its case against former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, it put its star witness, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, on the stand for a second time.

Wearing a gray suit and a blue tie, smiled awkwardly at jurors and slumped in his seat during a sidebar that lasted more than 17 minutes shortly after Mr. Blankfein resumed his testimony.

Mr. Blankfein, who started his testimony about policies regarding board meetings at Goldman on Monday, said on Thursday that his regular practice was to update directors about how the company was doing financially He said he didn’t want board members to be surprised.

Jed Rakoff, the federal judge presiding over the insider trading trial of former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, is known for blazing his own legal path, no matter the high powered arguments lobbed his way by New York’s best attorneys.

Benula Bensam, however, may be the first person to need U.S. Marshals to stop her from trying to sway the judge.

The 24-year-old student at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law says was asked to leave Judge Rakoff’s courtroom by U.S. Marshals, who interrogated her for about a half hour and accused her of attempting to influence the famed, 68-year-old judge.

Bensam’s offense: A zealous passion for the federal rules of evidence.

Bensam says that after taking a class on the subject recently, she became so enthralled by the evidentiary process that she wrote three letters . . . . . Read More »

Rajat Gupta arrives with his attorney Gary Naftalis at federal court in New York on Friday.

By Chad Bray and Reed Albergotti

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta was worth tens of millions of dollars in 2008 when he was allegedly passing confidential information about the investment bank to hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, his personal banker said Friday, in testimony that could bolster arguments by the defense that he had no financial motive to provide such tips.

Heather Webster, a banker in J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s private bank, testified that Mr. Gupta, the former head of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., had a personal net worth of $84.112 million in April 2008, including $11.2 million in cash, and had an irrevocable trust worth . . . . . Read More »

Here are the witnesses we’re expecting today in the trial of Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. director accused of passing tips to hedge fund titan Raj Rajaratnam:

• Michael Cardillo, a former Galleon Group trader and cooperating witness: Hewill resume his testimony under cross examinaion on Tuesday. Mr. Cardillo, who pleaded guilty to criminal charges, testified last week about a tip regarding Procter & Gamble Co. He testified that the brother of Galleon co-founder Raj Rajaratnam told him that Mr. Rajaratnam received a tip in January 2008. . . Read More »

Trial watch: John Edwards’s defense lawyers rested their case Wednesday without him testifying, to the surprise of no one. Meanwhile, the government’s star witness in the perjury trial of Roger Clemens struggled with his recollections Wednesday, offering shifting explanations under cross-examination about the former pitching great’s alleged steroid use. WSJ, WSJ

CDOs: U.S. securities regulators are investigating hedge-fund firm Magnetar Capital LLC, which bet on several mortgage-bond deals that wound up imploding during the financial crisis. “As we have stated publicly and acknowledged many times, the SEC has been investigating a variety of aspects of the CDO markets for some time,” a spokeswoman for Magnetar said. . . Read More »

About Law Blog

The Law Blog covers the legal arena’s hot cases, emerging trends and big personalities. It’s brought to you by lead writer Jacob Gershman with contributions from across The Wall Street Journal’s staff. Jacob comes here after more than half a decade covering the bare-knuckle politics of New York State. His inside-the-room reporting left him steeped in legal and regulatory issues that continue to grab headlines.

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